The Sunnica Solar Farm Proposal

The Sunnica Solar farm is proposed to cover an area of about 2,500 acres, equivalent to over 2,000 football pitches. It comprises 4 large solar panel sites connected to each other and the national grid (at Burwell) via a circa 15 mile underground cable route.

Sunnica is proposing to build a large expansion to the substation in Burwell to accommodate the scheme.

In this area we currently have over 20 solar farms in operation or under development. These are between 25 and 250 acres in size.

If approved and built Sunnica will be the largest solar farm in the UK, if not Northern Europe and will be among the largest in the world.

The majority of the Sunnica Solar Farm area will be covered with about 1.1 million solar panels (according to information provided in the consultation material). The map below shows the local areas where Sunnica are proposing to install solar panels. All the background photographs of landscapes on this website are of areas Sunnica is proposing to put solar panels on.

While Sunnica are proposing some planted screening, the rolling landscape, in parts, makes it impossible to disguise the 2.5m high solar panels, the 6m high battery storage facilities and the 12m high substation expansion. And any planting, if successful, would take at least 15 years to become fully established.

The impact of solar panels at this scale and concentration will be to change the fundamental nature of the local environment from rural to industrial. It is an application to re-write our landscape from it's characteristic open nature to an area in which villages are divided by fenced-off fields of panels.

Sunnica is also proposing to install a huge Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) as part of the scheme. The BESS will be used to store electricity when grid prices are low and sell the electricity back to the grid when prices are high.

The Sunnica BESS would likely be one of the largest BESS facilities in the world. Sunnica Ltd appears to have no previous experience of delivering BESS technology at this scale and admitted during a consultation webinar that BESS technology was a "very steep learning curve".

The Sunnica BESS would be split across three sites near to Isleham/West Row, Red Lodge and Chippenham/Snailwell. The BESS compounds would cover 77 acres in total and comprise hundreds of 6m high shipping containers of Lithium-Ion batteries.

Lithium-Ion battery chemistry presents a significant fire and health risk (see the section on BESS technology).

The construction phase is proposed to take two years, with over 1,600 staff vehicle movements and over 200 Heavy Goods Vehicle movements per day (at peak), delivering construction materials to the four sites.

Access to many of the sites would be difficult for HGVs and other large construction vehicles and there is likely to be considerable local traffic disruption as HGVs make their way through the villages and narrow local roads.

Sunnica state that the Solar Farm would have a lifespan of 40 years. Most local solar farms have an expected lifespan of 25 years. At the end of life there will be a significant amount of work required to clean up the site, to prevent contamination of the local environment with toxic materials leaking from deteriorating solar panels and other equipment.

At present there is no facility to recycle component parts in the UK, so it is unclear what will happen to the millions of solar panels and batteries at the end of life.

Sunnica have not provided details of how they plan to de-commission the site, or how they will fund this, in their Development Consent Order application.